Matt Groening<\/a>, 72, on a recent episode of the Conan O\u2019Brien Needs a Friend podcast, the comedian said: “You are a big part of my life changing in this amazing way.<\/p>\n“My origin story for people that don\u2019t know is I was working on Saturday Night Live. I was in a funk. I loved that job, and I loved everyone there, but I thought, ‘I need to go. I\u2019m just in a bad place in my life.'”<\/p>\n
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Conan continued: “So I walked away from SNL with no job, and two of your writers, I think it was [Mike] Reiss and [Al] Jean, heard that Conan O\u2019Brien might be loose and available.<\/p>\n
\n“So the next thing I knew, I was submitting, I don\u2019t know, some of the sketches I had written on SNL, and then I was told, ‘You\u2019ve got a job on The Simpsons, and you need to be here in four days.’<\/p>\n
\n“And it really saved my life.”<\/p>\n
\nHe recalled being surrounded by “just such a fantastic, legendary writer room” during his time on the show.<\/p>\n
\nConan added: “I was so intimidated when I showed up. I had never written that form before.<\/p>\n
\n“I had only written sketch, and suddenly they\u2019re saying, ‘This has to happen in this act, but then in that act…’ I\u2019m like, ‘What are you talking about?’<\/p>\n
\n“It was a magical part of my life.”<\/p>\n
\nThe entertainer quit The Simpsons in 1993, going on to become a talk show host on NBC, with Late Night with Conan O\u2019Brien, which ended in 2009 after 16 years, then The Tonight Show with Conan O\u2019Brien from 2009 until 2010, followed by TBS’ Conan from 2010 until 2021.<\/p>\n
\nAnd 33 years after his time on The Simpsons, Conan was delighted to finally have the opportunity to formally \u201cthank\u201d Matt for letting him work on the series.<\/p>\n
\nHe said: “God, do I thank you. I don\u2019t know where I\u2019d be if I hadn\u2019t gone there.”<\/p>\n
\nMatt quipped: “I want you to know that your old office has been preserved. It is used for storage.”<\/p>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"12 September 2026 Conan O\u2019Brien credits The Simpsons for “saving [his] life” after leaving Saturday Night Live amid being in a “bad place”. Former The Simpsons writer and producer Conan O’Brien The 63-year-old star quit the NBC sketch comedy show in 1991 after three years as a writer because he suffered burnout, and joined Fox’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":262680,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[16780,10795,15562,16779],"class_list":{"0":"post-262679","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-make-up","8":"tag-al-jean","9":"tag-conan-obrien","10":"tag-matt-groening","11":"tag-mike-reiss"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}